Water voles have been brought back from the brink of extinction in Somerset after a campaign which removed 400 minks from the area.

The water vole – Britain’s most endangered mammal – is rapidly re-colonising parts of the Somerset Levels where they have been absent for many decades.

The British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) led a campaign of mink control to reduce the number of predators from the vole’s habitat.

As well as removing 400 mink, BASC members, local wildfowling clubs and shooting syndicates also carried out riverside habitat management work to permit the return of the tiny mammal.

The mink control team includes fishery owners, local Wildlife Trust staff and volunteers, RSPB and Natural England wardens.

They say that as the number of mink has been reduced, there has been a surge in the number of water voles across the Somerset Levels.

BASC’s South West biodiversity officer Robin Marshall-Ball said: “The Somerset Environmental Record Centre conducted a wide-ranging survey in 2009 which confirms that the water vole is rapidly returning to areas of the Somerset Levels where they have not been seen for years.

“This is a major success story and shows just what can be done when different organisations are committed to working together for a common goal.

“Now that my remit has expanded to cover Dorset I am also working to set a similar network of volunteers in the west of that county and hope for similar success.”

The project, part-funded by the Environment Agency, is part of BASC’s Green Shoots programme which uses the knowledge and resources of the shooting community to achieve conservation targets set in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan.

There are six species of vole which live in the UK. The creatures have many predators, including mink, weasels, cats, foxes, pike, owls, other birds of prey and adders.

They have been in decline for many decades, and a national survey between 1996-98 showed that the water vole had been lost from a massive 94 per cent of sites.

When threatened, water voles often dive under water and kick up a cloud of mud to hide from predators.

However, this does not fool their greatest predator, the American mink, which is able to successfully hunt the water vole on land, in the water and even inside the burrow system.

The species was made famous by Ratty in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, who was a vole rather than a rat.

Since April 1998 the water vole has received legal protection through its inclusion in Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.